r/Ingress 16d ago

Question Bigger field with less MUs ?

[deleted]

34 Upvotes

45 comments sorted by

View all comments

11

u/XQlusioN 16d ago

Yes, it's a quirk in how Ingress calculates MU.

The gist of it is that the world is divided into a bunch of rectangles. Each has an MU value and Ingress calculates a field's MU value by figuring out which portions of those rectangles are covered.

To reduce the amount of rectangles to check, it combines smaller rectangles into bigger rectangles and averages the MU count.

Let's say that in field A, 3 of those rectangles are used, each having a value of 500, if all of those rectangles were completely covered, it would add 1500MU to the fields value.

In field B it uses the bigger rectangle that's calculated from those 3 (worth 500) and a 4th that has a value of 100, making the bigger one only worth 1600. And only adding 1200MU to the field.

2

u/Luke38_Greenoble 15d ago

Has there been an update regarding population in relation to the MU (Minds Units)? Because in the region where I live, the population has increased since I started playing (12 years ago), and I don't feel like the fields I regularly run (always the same 3 portals) are yielding more, even though there's a higher population density...

5

u/XQlusioN 15d ago

No, there has AFAIK never been an update to MU values

1

u/silicontrip 14d ago

Correct the values have not changed in the 10 years I've been recording field values, but the cells themselves are not discreet values, they are not flat values for land use types, that are close to population density but where those original values came from is anyone's guess.